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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26956693">Stormwrack</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio'>Sholio</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Friendship, Gen, Rain, Team Bonding, Undead Owen Harper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:01:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,111</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26956693</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The last time Owen was in the Brecon Beacons, Welsh cannibals tried to eat him. This time, it was pouring buckets on him, and he was dead. At least the latter might help with the cannibal problem, although given his luck, probably not. They might just consider him well-aged, like a side of bacon.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stormwrack</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/sovay/gifts">sovay</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The request was for something to do with autumn; I ended up with cold rain.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The last time Owen was in the Brecon Beacons, Welsh cannibals tried to eat him. This time, it was pouring buckets on him, and he was dead. At least the latter might help with the cannibal problem, although given his luck, probably not. They might just consider him well-aged, like a side of bacon.</p><p>He snorted a laugh. It wasn't really funny, but in his circumstances, you laughed at the things you could still laugh at.</p><p>"Did you find something, Owen?" Tosh asked, and he shook his head, and then, because she probably couldn't see it in the dark and the wet, he answered back: "No, love, just a private joke."</p><p>Tosh nodded—he caught, in the backwash of light from her torch, the pale glimmer of her face under the hood of her cagoule. Owen had let his hood slip down; it wasn't like he had any reason to mind getting wet, aside from the water running into his eyes. He couldn't feel it trickling down the back of his neck, at least not much, and he didn't mind the cold. The bandage on his hand was soggy and unraveling; that part was annoying. He kept having to stop to tuck the ends back in.</p><p>Through the dripping trees, he caught intermittent, watery glimmers of light indicating Ianto and Gwen's positions, in different parts of their little patch of possibly alien-infested bog. Jack, of course, was back in Cardiff, dry and warm. Oh <i>sure,</i> urgent after-hours meeting with MI-5, a likely story, <i>Jack.</i></p><p>Aliens could pick them off one by one, he thought gloomily, and it wasn't like anyone would notice in this sodding mess. Or they could all fall into the bog and have their bodies exhumed two thousand years in the future to be exhibited as a museum curiosity.</p><p>Tosh gave a sudden yelp. Because the universe had the sense of humor of a nine-year-old, a mud hole between tree roots had swallowed her up to the knee. Owen gave her a hand pulling her out, but the mud slurped off her wellington. Tosh stood clinging to Owen's arm with one sock foot tucked up under the edge of her cagoule, her face a picture of distress, and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "Bollocks."</p><p>Gwen slogged up to them through the wet grass. "That's it, I'm calling it," she said, taking in the scene. "We're all going to catch pneumonia out here. Let's go home."</p><p>"You don't actually catch pneumonia or any other illness from being wet," Owen couldn't help pointing out. "Speaking as a doctor."</p><p>He couldn't quite see her expression under the dripping hood, but he got its gist from her tone. "If you want to stay out here while the rest of us go in, then—"</p><p>Ianto joined them under the tree. "What's happening? Did we find any alien technology?"</p><p>"I don't think there's any out here to find," Tosh said, wobbling slightly as she clung to Owen's arm and tried not to put her foot down on the grass. "It's either a system malfunction, or Jack is wrong—"</p><p>"What a shock," Owen said. This time Ianto was the one who gave him a dirty look. Bunch of suck-ups, the lot of them.</p><p>"—or it's just too well hidden. We'll never find it tonight."</p><p>"Right then," Gwen said, and she turned away, touching her radio. "Jack, I know you're not taking our calls because of the MI-5 thing, but just to let you know, we're drowning out here and we're heading in for the night."</p><p>"There's hot coffee in the car," Ianto said, sounding far more cheerful than anyone should with rain running off his nose.</p><p>"Could someone with long arms please see if you can reach my boot?" Tosh asked plaintively.</p><p>*</p><p>No one could, so Owen gave her one of his, on the general principle that he didn't actually need them, at least not as much as she did. (In all honesty he didn't fancy the idea of going through eternity with thornbushes stuck to his feet or broken toes to go with his broken finger, but Tosh would definitely have felt it more.) The boot actually fit her reasonably well—Gwen contributed a sock to help—which led to endless teasing all the way back to the car from the two Welsh bastards about his tiny feet. But Ianto slowed down and turned his torch backward to light the path ahead of Owen and show him what was up ahead ... with the result that Ianto walked into two hedges and one small willow tree, which Owen magnanimously did not say anything about.</p><p>(Much.)</p><p>For a change, the SUV was exactly where they'd left it. They piled in squishily, struggling with rain gear and dripping on each other.</p><p>"I think someone may have stepped in something back there," Ianto said. "Coffee?"</p><p>"You know, we passed through a village just a couple of miles back," Gwen said, taking the thermos. "I bet they probably have a hotel, or an inn, or ... something."</p><p>"A hayrack, maybe a barn," Owen muttered.</p><p>"We haven't any dry things," Tosh said. She shook out her borrowed boot and handed it back to Owen. "Or overnight kit."</p><p>"Does anyone actually care?" Gwen asked. She leaned over the seat and passed the thermos to Tosh. "We can make do. We're Torchwood; we're good at that. It's <i>hours</i> back to Cardiff."</p><p>"I'm chafing in places I don't want to chafe," Ianto put in from the front seat, picking leaves out of his collar.</p><p>"No one needs to hear about your chafing," Owen said. Tosh pushed the thermos into his hands. It was on the tip of his tongue to remind her that he didn't need to drink anymore, in fact <i>couldn't</i> drink, but the smell of it was rich and dark and warm, and he was still inhaling it when the SUV lurched into motion.</p><p>*</p><p>The inn had a common room with an actual bloody fireplace, and heavy wooden beams and antique iron objects on the walls. Owen would have puked at the country kitsch if he was still capable. How many tourists did they have to impress, all the way out here?</p><p>"Did we fall into the Rift when I wasn't looking and tumble out in the 19th century?" Owen asked, laying down the first-aid kit from the SUV on an end table that looked like it was carved from a solid log. The kit was the only thing really worth bringing in; everything else was alien-hunting equipment.</p><p>"I think it's nice," Ianto said.</p><p>"You would." </p><p>Ianto gave him a look and went off to see about rooms.</p><p>Tosh sat down beside the fireplace and stretched out her wet feet close enough to the fire that the toes of her socks steamed. Gwen, in one sock foot and one bare, shed her soaked outerwear and started hanging things on chairs. She held out a hand for Owen's cagoule. He sighed and yielded it up.</p><p>Ianto came back to report that there were only two rooms. "But I figured there wasn't any reason not to double up. Two blokes, two ... er ... women, and that ought to work out pretty well, I thought."</p><p>"Who did they let the rest of them to?" Owen asked. No one was particularly indulging him as the designated grumpy bastard, but he didn't plan to let that stop him.</p><p>"Not two <i>available</i> rooms, two <i>rooms,"</i> Ianto said. He held his hands out to the fire.</p><p>"How fun and quaint," Owen muttered. He dragged one of the heavy leather armchairs nearer to the fire; then Gwen got the other end of a couch and they pushed it over. "Did it occur to you that since we're all soaking wet, we'll be doubling up naked?"</p><p>Ianto froze.</p><p>"Lucky for you I don't sleep."</p><p>"Does that mean you'll be roaming the halls naked?" Gwen asked. </p><p>"Watching him sleep, more like."</p><p>"Will all of you please stop," Ianto said.</p><p>"I'm an actual bloody catch, you know," Owen snapped to Ianto's retreating back. "Where are you going?"</p><p>"Finding out if anyone has anything dry to wear!"</p><p>He came back empty-handed, but apparently there was some hope of dry clothes being brought up to their rooms later (Owen wasn't holding his breath, if he'd had breath to hold) and also, Ianto had managed to procure hot spiked coffee and a promise of food to come a bit later. He'd even brought a coffee for Owen, who found himself wanting to apologize for being an ass, but he ended up, instead, tucked up next to the fireplace with his boots and pullover off, steaming gently as he dried, like the rest of them. </p><p>The coffee was in a heavy pottery mug, piping hot, and Owen held it against his chest where he could feel it, just a little, through the core of him. Smell was perhaps the one sense that he still had in full measure, and the rich roast smell, layered with the sharp scent of the alcohol, was like the narrowest crack of a window looking back to a time when he wasn't like this.</p><p>Gwen was stretched out in front of the fire. Ianto kept jumping up to get them more things (towels; some spare blankets from the rooms) until Gwen made him stop by laying her head in his lap. Now he was propped up against the armchair with a couple of couch cushions to keep him more or less vertical. Tosh was spilling all over the couch, wrapped in one of the blankets; the booze in the coffee seemed to be hitting her hard.</p><p>Owen thought about just leaving the sodden bandage on his hand alone, but he didn't need things starting to rot; he was zombie enough as it was. Or bugs getting in there. He reached up past Tosh for the first-aid kit and opened it. On the far side of the fireplace, Gwen cracked an eye open at the movement, and then closed her eyes again.</p><p>"Any of you lot need anything out of here? No?" Well, at least nobody'd been hurt, beyond the loss of Tosh's boot; that was a good night, for them. He unrolled a fresh bandage.</p><p>Tosh patted his shoulder, and then slithered off the couch onto the floor with him. "Let me," she said quietly.</p><p>And this would be the point when he ought to make a crack about her medical degree, or lack thereof, but he was just ... <i>tired</i>, on some soul-deep level, and wet enough to have found out that one thing the dead shared with the living was the general discomfort of wet underwear. Tired, and wet, and <i>done.</i> So he held out his hand, and Tosh gently and carefully unwound the sodden bandage, and just as gently rewrapped it, as if she'd forgotten that pain was something he didn't feel anymore.</p><p>"Bet Jack's sorry he missed this," Owen said.</p><p>Gwen smiled with her eyes closed, and Ianto got the besotted look he generally got when anyone mentioned Jack. Owen hoped Jack knew what he had there, the depth of emotion he'd stirred up; if not, well, Owen was a doctor—knowing thousands of innovative ways to kill a man went with the territory.</p><p>"We should take a picture so he knows what he's missing," Gwen said, eyes still closed.</p><p>Ianto perked up from his steady, sleepy slide down the front of the armchair. "That is an excellent idea." He pulled out his phone, one of those ridiculous flat ones with the camera in it that Owen was starting to see around more and more, mostly in the hands of complete twats.</p><p>Gwen oozed off Ianto and flopped on Tosh instead, and Ianto leaned around, and Owen wasn't entirely sure how he got dragged into this, or why it was so easy to smile.</p><p>"And you can see it right away," Ianto said, flipping the phone around so they could all see themselves looking like a cluster of half-drowned rats. He flipped the phone back around and started typing, probably in all seriousness telling Jack that he was missing out on almost getting almost drowned in rural Wales, wish you were here, et cetera.</p><p>There was a tug on Owen's hand, and he looked down to see Tosh tucking in the ends of the bandage, as carefully as if it mattered. She kept her hands around Owen's, one on each side. Warm enough that he could feel it. Feel her.</p><p>"How does it feel?" she asked.</p><p>It was a question that had only one honest answer, really. But instead he said, "Good. It feels good." And he meant it.</p>
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